Looking for I.T. Jobs that don't require you to be on the phone?

need2learn16

Besides programming what are some I.T jobs that don't require you to be on the phone or have little phone contact. Ideally a job where you don't have to talk to a lot in general. I feel I work best when I can just sit do my work in private. I know a lot of I.T jobs involve this but I was looking for different jobs a could work toward even if they are rare or hard to get.An example was a job I interviewed which was called application provisioning(if I remember correctly). From my understanding you would take tickets as they came in and just a setup the accounts or applications as they came in. The details of the work wasn't important (to this thread) but, the fact that I wouldn't have to talk to users all day. I could just take tickets and do my work in somewhat private. I know you need to be able to communicate with people but I just enjoy work more if my day wasn't feet with constantly talking on the phones or in person if possible.If this was posted in another thread please let me know it was difficult to question to search for

LeBroke

Generally, you can have fairly little contact with people (if you so choose) in most IT jobs that aren't support roles. Only problem is, it takes a few years to get to that point.

But anything like sysadmin (at anything other than a small business), network admin, syseng, DevOps, software developer, etc, you can spend most of your day just doing tickets/projects in your queue. The downside is, the higher up you go, the more meetings you have, especially if you work in a Scrum/Agile environment. I have a good 12 hours of meetings a week, and I go out of my way to avoid them. Scrum stuff (sprint planning, grooming, standups), and planning/architecture discussions eat up a majority of this.

N7Valiant

LeBroke wrote: »

Generally, you can have fairly little contact with people (if you so choose) in most IT jobs that aren't support roles. Only problem is, it takes a few years to get to that point.

But anything like sysadmin (at anything other than a small business), network admin, syseng, DevOps, software developer, etc, you can spend most of your day just doing tickets/projects in your queue. The downside is, the higher up you go, the more meetings you have, especially if you work in a Scrum/Agile environment. I have a good 12 hours of meetings a week, and I go out of my way to avoid them. Scrum stuff (sprint planning, grooming, standups), and planning/architecture discussions eat up a majority of this.

That actually seems to cover a pretty broad spectrum. Even on the security side I'd imagine pen testers would have to talk to plenty of people as part of their jobs either in phishing attempts, writing reports, or going over the details of reports or the scope of testing.

I think that outside of datacenter type of jobs, IT actually involves a lot more socializing than what most people imagine it to be. The best situation IMO would not be trying to avoid interacting with people entirely, but perhaps shift away from a model where you have to talk with "clients" on a constant basis(i.e. first call resolution).

I don't think I'd mind being a SysAdmin talking to people regularly if these are people I know and work with as opposed to some high-falootin' VP of a major company who doesn't give a damn if you only have 3 weeks of experience, he needs all of his problems fixed 10 seconds ago.

Basic85

I can't stand talking on the phones all day either after working in a call center for 2.5 years but those are the jobs I can't get called about.

LeBroke

N7Valiant wrote: »

That actually seems to cover a pretty broad spectrum. Even on the security side I'd imagine pen testers would have to talk to plenty of people as part of their jobs either in phishing attempts, writing reports, or going over the details of reports or the scope of testing.

I think that outside of datacenter type of jobs, IT actually involves a lot more socializing than what most people imagine it to be. The best situation IMO would not be trying to avoid interacting with people entirely, but perhaps shift away from a model where you have to talk with "clients" on a constant basis(i.e. first call resolution).

I don't think I'd mind being a SysAdmin talking to people regularly if these are people I know and work with as opposed to some high-falootin' VP of a major company who doesn't give a damn if you only have 3 weeks of experience, he needs all of his problems fixed 10 seconds ago.

I'm applying my own standard here, though. I'm the type of person to go out partying on a Tuesday night because I'm bored and haven't talked to enough people that day, sleep be damned. Ironically, I still hate talking to the phone.

Majority of people I see working in tech basically just sit with their noses in a computer and their socialization is limited to team meetings, Slack, and the occasional lunch with a few people they know in the caf. This is very different from support roles or, for example, project managers, who constantly run around between multiple people/teams to get stuff done.

I specifically didn't mention pentesters because vast majority are consultants, which in itself involves a lot of running around and talking, even if you're in a backend role.

N7Valiant

I'm certainly interested in a SysAdmin role, but wouldn't they also have to deal with a lot of user requests, but mostly servicing internal clients? I don't much mind that at all as I generally find that dealing with external clients tends to open up the pool of entitled pricks.

EANx

Tier-1 does a lot of talking with customers, tier-2 does some but not as much. Tier-3 does very little, they talk more with management that wants to know why something happened. I'm assuming the OP is tier-1. If that's the case, the best way to get out of it is to get your a$$ in gear and study and get a role with tier-2.

Dojiscalper

Not a lot of contact with clients in field support. Just taking tickets and fixing problems or installing equipment. The biggest interaction daily is introducing yourself, listening to the clients issue and then fixing it and giving a quick summary of what you did. You see maybe 3-5 people per day spread out over the whole shift. There are lots of techs who value their alone time with in these jobs. The most interaction is when things keep going bad and you have to give more lengthy explanations to a few more people.

N7Valiant

EANx wrote: »

Tier-1 does a lot of talking with customers, tier-2 does some but not as much. Tier-3 does very little, they talk more with management that wants to know why something happened. I'm assuming the OP is tier-1. If that's the case, the best way to get out of it is to get your a$$ in gear and study and get a role with tier-2.

I think that largely depends on whether you're in an MSP or in-house IT, as well as the overall IT budget. Our Tier 2 can spend just as much time as the rest of us on the phones simply because there aren't enough people for the amount of work.

The situation won't just change with Tier 2, it also depends on the environment.

LeBroke

N7Valiant wrote: »

I'm certainly interested in a SysAdmin role, but wouldn't they also have to deal with a lot of user requests, but mostly servicing internal clients? I don't much mind that at all as I generally find that dealing with external clients tends to open up the pool of entitled pricks.

Heavily depends on what kind of role. Internal, larger companies, you're pretty much never going to have to deal with users. Smaller companies or MSP, that's all you do, especially if there's no/very little helpdesk presence.

And if you do Linux, you pretty much only interact with other teams.

need2learn16

Thanks for everyone who posted. I actually kind of forgot I made this thread. My issue isn't that I didn't want any communication like meetings, consults, occasional calls. My main issue was the constant on the phone troubleshooting that comes with like one poster said tier 1 type. However, I didn't want to increase my skills with certifications and move up to just do higher payed more technical versions of that type of work.  For example if there are systems admin or network admin who have to constantly troubleshoot over the phone if its with other highly skilled workers I wouldn't want to do that.

I was thinking about moving more toward programming because of the nature of the job but didn't know if there where programming jobs or programming "like" jobs  (maybe scripting or working with linux) that I could switch to that would allow me to gain working skills in a few years without much prior knowledge. It wouldn't have to be programming exactly like I said but similar to the nature of the job. Also, recently the ability to work remotely has become something that I really want to do moving forward so this type of work  would seem to align with that.